shards
by wuogkat
Summary: For the Obsession Contest. One crush, one kiss, mixed signals, and two messed up individuals. Rated M for excessive angst, stalking, and some blood. o/s


**Obsession One-Shot Contest**

**Title: shards**

**Your pen name: WuogKat**

**Characters: Bella, Edward**

**Disclaimer: Twilight is the property of Stephenie Meyer, no copyright infringement is intended. Obsession lyrics are the property of Siouxie and the Banshees. **

** Beta'd by the fabulous Lady Rip.**

** Um, if you're disgusted by blood, you may want to skip this one.**

**Lyrics that inspired you:**

_I broke into your room - I broke down in my room_

_Touched your belongings there - and left a lock of my hair_

_Another sign for you_

_.  
_

_You screamed into my face get the hell out of my place_

_Another sign for me? can you forgive me? _

_For not understanding your ways_

_._

To see other entries in the Obsession Contest, please visit the C2 page

:.net/community/Obsession_Contest_Entries/80822/

* * *

He kissed me once. He was drunk and had just stumbled in from some college party. Alice was having a sleepover in the floor of their immaculate, Better Homes and Gardens den; she'd invited me, Jessica, and Angela over for pizza, ice cream, and makeovers. They were all asleep, and I lay there in a blanket along one end of the gigantic sectional sofa. Even then, before the kiss, I pined for him. It made no sense, but that night I lay there in my umbros and a tank-top, with eye shadow and a completely unnecessary application of blush on my face, wondering when he'd get home.

I was pathetic. I rolled over and faced the cushions. Edward was two years older, a sophomore in college, and the last thing that he would want to do while home on his summer break would be to fool around with some high school girl who happened to be his sister's best friend. He was out of my league, and I knew it. I should have just taken Jacob Black up on his offer to "take me to prom." I knew what he meant by that and it had more to do with what would happen _after _prom. I could like Jacob; he was a nice kid. However, I didn't want a kid. I wanted a man. One man in particular, Edward Cullen.

So when the door creaked open at three in the morning, and I heard him shout a slurred goodbye to Emmett, I sat up and looked at him. He stumbled into the den and smirked at the girls on the couch, until he saw me. Our eyes met for just a moment. He staggered as if I'd hit him.

"Bella," he whispered.

"Edward," I replied in a voice too breathy and deep for a teenage girl.

"Come," he said, and I was helpless to resist. I peeled the tangle of blanket from around my legs as he watched and followed him to his room. It was like being invited into the basement of a museum, or a bank vault. No one was ever allowed in. It was kept pristine and locked and never to be touched, especially by a clumsy girl with a little more than a crush.

I could feel something in the pit of my stomach, an ache. The feeling wasn't entirely unpleasant. It got stronger the closer together we stood. He reached out and opened the door, urging me inside with a hand on my lower back that made the slight ache in my belly bloom into something else, something warm like a flame.

_I shouldn't be in his room,_ I told myself, but I stepped across the threshold like a little lamb. I wanted to be there. I wanted him to lead me from then until forever. I knew as I walked forward with his hand on my back that I would do whatever he wanted me to do, and I would be ecstatic about it. I would take anything that he would give me and give anything that he asked. It frightened me.

He pushed the door closed behind him, and I felt the air crackle around us. I know that he felt it, too. He was looking at me the way that Jasper always looked at Alice – like she was something to eat. I would be a very good little lamb and let him if he asked. The room was too dark to see anything other than the moonlight playing off of his features. I looked at him, and he offered a smile, but it wasn't the kind, brotherly smile that I'd seen so many times before. This was the smile of someone who was about to get away with something.

"Bella, I'm going to kiss you, and you're going to kiss me back, alright?" It only sounded like a question. My hands started to tremble, and my thighs pushed themselves together. I backed up until I ran into something solid. He advanced slowly, like the predator that he was.

Had I really wanted this? The answer from the flames in my stomach that started to heat more intimate and embarrassing areas of my body was, 'Yes!' I did want this. I'd been waiting for this. The slimy kisses shared with Jacob and Mike in the parking lot of Newton's Outfitters had been in preparation for this moment.

"Shhhh, little girl," he cooed and ran a hot hand down my cheek. I could feel the flames lick up my body to meet it. "Have you kissed a boy before?"

"Of course," I whispered. He leaned in, and I could taste the mint-flavored alcohol on his breath. It made me dizzy and heightened my excitement. His fingers ghosted delicately over my neck, and I felt my throat close in panic. I was going to do this.

"Breathe, little one." His lips brushed against mine as he spoke, and as commanded, I opened my mouth and drew in another breath of mint and Edward. Before my lips closed he reached out with his tongue and brushed it along my bottom lip. I exhaled a shaky breath and pulled in another. His tongue continued a gentle, rhythmic path back and forth along my lip.

A hand slid from my neck to my backside. I squeaked involuntarily, and he pulled back slightly to shush me. His other hand twined into my hair and pulled gently. I felt like I was on fire. I was so unprepared for this, for him.

"Relax, and be a good, quiet, little girl, okay?"

I tried to nod, but his hand tightened further into my hair as he pressed his lips to mine. My world ended at that moment. It felt like nothing I'd ever experienced, and I wanted more. I opened my lips for him, and his tongue roughly found mine. I moaned a little and tilted my head. He was commanding me, consuming me. He tasted like mint, and the smell of spicy cologne filled my nose.

_So good._

I wanted this. I had to have this. I let my tongue run along his as it thrust into my mouth. My hands suddenly stopped shaking and found their way to his back, his chest, his hair. My hips moved against my will, and I felt his fingers massaging my backside roughly. I moaned again as his knee forced its way between mine, right up into the flames.

I was going to die, but what better way to go than death by kissing Edward. I would never kiss another boy. He was taking everything, claiming me, and leaving nothing left for me to give to anyone else. My body screamed that it would give him anything so long as this continued.

Eventually, we slowed to a stop. He moved his nose down my neck and kissed the skin just above the neck of my tank top. My heart sputtered a few times in my chest. I swear that it said his name. I was his.

"Lay down with me," he said. He stood back and took my hand to lead me to his bed. He pulled back the covers and lifted me, gently placing me in the middle between his spicy scented sheets. The bed dipped, and his body curled protectively around mine. I was asleep in minutes.

The following morning I woke up on the same section of couch where I had laid the night before. My feet and head were reversed. I couldn't see the door from this angle. I missed him. The ache in my stomach had spread to my chest and was more like a gaping hole than a pleasant fire. I needed him back.

Angela, Jessica, and Alice were no longer sprawled out on the other sections of couch. I lifted myself up and went in search of some form of human companionship, hopefully Edward, so that this feeling wouldn't last.

I could smell pancakes and sausage coming from the kitchen, so I ventured in to find the origin of the sweet smell. Alice and Jess were sitting in the breakfast nook with full plates; Edward stood at the counter expertly wielding a spatula and tending the griddle.

"Morning, sleepy head!" Alice chimed much too merrily for a Saturday morning after a late night. "Edward was making his favorite hangover breakfast and decided to share!"

"Quiet, please," he groaned. "If I hadn't shared then you never would have stopped talking," he teased.

I moved closer to the stove to collect a plate and sensed a sudden chill that made the ache worse. It was like cold on an aching joint, the exact opposite of what was needed. My fingers grasped the edge of a plate from the shelf next to the stove. I looked up, puzzled by the sudden chill and met Edward's eyes. I didn't find what I was expecting.

Edward wasn't looking at me with the passion that he had the night before, nor did his features possess the brotherly grin that they normally held for me. Instead, he looked at me with pure loathing and hatred.

My fingers slipped and the plate bounced off of the counter in one piece only to crash to the tile floor and shatter into a million pieces. I backed up away from Edward and my feet crunched into some of the shards. There were voices. Alice and Jessica were frantically chirping, Edward was grumbling. I could feel the glass piercing the skin on my feet. However, that wasn't as strong at the fissure that was forming in my heart. It was splitting in two. I was going to break open and bleed and die in the Cullen's kitchen if I stayed.

So I ran. My bloodied feet left prints on the carpet as I fled from the kitchen into the den where I grabbed my only partially repacked bag and my keys. I knocked Angela over in my haste to flee. I left my shoes where they sat neatly in the foyer because I couldn't stop for them. The trail of bloody footprints followed me to my truck and inside where I started it and drove as fast as I could away from the Cullen house.

Minutes later I pulled into town and tried to decide where to go. I couldn't go home with no shoes and battered feet. Charlie would be too suspicious if he happened to be home. If he had gone fishing, then I could tend my wounds in peace. I reached for my bag and rooted around inside for my phone; it wasn't there. I'd left it at Alice's.

I did the only thing that I could do: I drove down my street and checked for his car, hoping the whole time that if he was, indeed, home that he wouldn't hear my truck. I was fortunate in that the driveway was devoid of vehicles. I turned and depressed the break with a slippery foot, before cutting the engine and hobbling for the door. I could no longer run. The pain had started to set in, and the smell of blood was beginning to make it hard for me to remain conscious.

The door swung in, and I limped up the stairs to the bathroom, not bothering to close it behind me. The stairwell seemed so long, longer than it had even when I was a small child. I climbed carefully and dropped my feet into the bathtub, running warm water over them. The water turned pink as it swirled down the drain. I pushed the stopper into the tub. The water dulled the scent and made the blood bearable to be around.

I reached into the cabinet behind me and fished out the tweezers. I carefully lifted a foot and began to pull the shards out. I dropped them into the garbage pail one by one, wincing as I pulled each out. By the end I was forced to rest my head on the lid of the toilet. The bathtub was nearly filled with soiled water. I reached over and cut off the flow. My feet still needed to be bandaged, but I couldn't bear to look down into the tainted water.

A sob bubbled up from my chest, and I knew that I had to move away from the tub and into my room. I closed my eyes and reached for the stopper, tugging on it until it released and the water gurgled down into the sewer. I pulled the hand towels off of the bar next to the sink and wrapped them around my ruined feet. I shuffled like that into my bedroom and collapsed on the bed to cry.

Sobs wracked my body. I didn't know what had passed between that wonderful kiss and waking up in the morning, but it seemed that Edward didn't really want me. He'd shown me something intense and real and beautiful and then ripped it away. I couldn't breathe as mucus clogged my nose and throat. I gagged and coughed, making a disgusting mess of my bed. How could that have been it, and why did he hate me in the morning? I had done exactly what he asked. I pounded the bed with my fist and thrashed from side to side. My hair stuck to the mess on my face and in my sheets.

Eventually, I collapsed out of exhaustion.

I woke when the sun was high in the sky. My hair was no longer stuck to my face, and I felt somehow less empty, almost normal. I sensed movement and realized that I wasn't alone. Someone was in my room. I sat straight up and met the bold green eyes of one Edward Cullen.

"How … ?" I asked.

"You left the door open. Alice and I came after you when you ran," he said.

I reached up to run a hand through my hair and was met with a sloppy ponytail. I felt my brow furrow as I fingered the strands of dirty hair. I reflexively tightened it.

"I pulled it back. You looked so desperate and wild in your sleep," he explained, and moved to sit next to me on the bed. "I would have tended your feet, but I didn't want to wake you." He was being nice. I looked down at my fingers and clasped them together, perplexed.

"Edward, what -?"

"I'm sorry. I know that I was a jerk this morning, but this can't happen," he cut me off. I saw him reach to touch me with his left hand only to drop it back down on the bed.

"But last night you wanted me?" It sounded like a question. "I don't understand." I tried to hold back the fresh round of tears that were springing to my eyes. He produced some gauze and antibiotic cream from a small bag and moved down to my feet.

"There's nothing to understand, Bella. I was drunk, and I kissed you." He carefully peeled the hand towel away from one of my feet. The terrycloth had adhered to the dried blood. He had to pull it away, reopening the wound. I focused on that because it was so much less painful and disturbing than the pain in my chest.

It wasn't just a kiss to me. It was so much more than a kiss. I'd kissed guys before, and it was never like that. I'd never needed someone the way that I needed him. I would have done anything for it to continue. Hadn't he felt that, too?

"I won't be kissing you again," he said. The towel was completely removed from my foot, and he dabbed at the bloody mess a bit with an antiseptic wipe that seemed to sear the gashes in my feet and burn all the way into my chest. He applied the ointment and wrapped the foot before restarting the process on the other one.

More tears slid down my face. It was apparently just a kiss, and I needed to get a grip on my pathetic, hormonally driven, teenage emotions, because it meant nothing to him. I meant nothing to him. He was cleaning the second foot. The pain intensified, and I winced.

"Did you at least remove all of the glass?" he asked.

I nodded, but I didn't know if he saw it. His fingers explored one of the deeper cuts; finding no glass, he wiped it again. I sobbed.

"I'm sorry, but it had to be done," he murmured. His work on the foot was completed quickly. He stood, and I could feel him looking at me.

This was it. Edward was leaving. He'd done what he came to do, and I wouldn't see him again. What's worse was that he was taking my heart with him.

"Your things are downstairs on the table. You should stay here for a while and let the wounds scab over before you go downstairs."

I nodded again and listened as he strode out the door and down the stairs. The front door closed with a resounding click, and his car started outside. The pain in my chest became too much to bear, and I collapsed back down into my messy sheets.

It was around a week later, in the middle of the summer when I did it. I was at the Cullen house hanging out with Alice, and I saw his door standing open. I stared at it as I followed my friend down the hallway to her room. I wanted to go in so badly. Instead, I followed Alice like a good friend who wasn't totally obsessed with her brother. I pretended to be normal and talk about Jasper, and clothes, and make up, and all of that other inconsequential stuff that no longer mattered to me because I couldn't have Edward.

Then, I excused myself to sneak down the hall and roll in his sheets like the depraved stalker that I was sure to become. They smelled so good. I looked around from his bed and put together the pieces from the night he kissed me. I'd backed into the couch.

I got up and perched on the back of it, trying to feel his lips on mine, and his knee between my legs. I think that I moaned. I sat there with my eyes closed and my head turned up just as I had that night. I imagined his fist in my hair.

Then there was a noise at the door. I startled and fell backwards over the couch and onto the cushions. I closed my eyes, mortified, and there he was. Edward Cullen was standing over me. What made it even worse was that he wasn't alone. A gorgeous girl with perfectly coifed strawberry blonde hair stood next to him.

He looked at me in horror. I felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head. It triggered the pain in my chest again. He was with her, and he didn't want me. I was a fool.

"Bella, get out of my room!" he shrieked.

So I did what I do best. I ran. This time without the hindrance of bloodied feet or having to grab anything because I didn't have a purse and my shoes were still on my feet. I didn't even say goodbye to Alice. I just ran and then drove home much too fast.

I broke down again. Once again, it was messy and gross and my heart felt like it'd been ripped from my chest. I sobbed into the pillow, and beat it, and cried like the stupid girl I happened to have turned into. Why couldn't I feel like this over Jake, or Mike? Why did it have to be Edward who obviously couldn't love me?

I pulled myself into a ball and rocked with my pillow clutched to my chest. Why had he kissed me? Why couldn't he admit that it was different from any other kiss? Surely it had been the same for him. It had to be. It was intense. That kind of intensity couldn't be one-sided, could it?

There was no way that I could go on hurting like this. I went to the bathroom to consider my options. I could slit my wrists if I hacked at them with the razorblade Charlie left on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. It was one of the ones used for scraping off adhesive or opening boxes. He must have used it on the mirror after we repainted the bathroom. However, I seriously doubted that I'd make it through the first layer of skin before passing out. I'd barely been able to stand removing the glass from my feet; cutting myself would be so much harder than that.

The Swan household was limited as far as pharmaceuticals were concerned. We had Tylenol. I seriously doubted that it would dull the ache. Taking the whole bottle might result in some liver damage, but that would be it. The next bottle was Benadryl; it contained only two tablets. I could take those and sleep for the rest of the day, possibly the next. That was it.

As far as suicide options went, there was Charlie's gun. However, I'd have to wait for Charlie to be home and then sneak off with it. That was highly unlikely. He hung out in the den for most of the evening and had a clear line of sight on the door from his chair.

I opted for a double dose of Benadryl and temporary oblivion. I wrote Charlie a note about having an allergic reaction to something at the Cullens' and taking something for it. I neglected to mention that the allergy was to their eldest child, Edward. I suggested that he just order pizza and signed it with my love before tacking it up on the fridge and tucking myself into bed to forget.

I slept hard. Benadryl affected me like some sort of hard-core drug. I slipped in and out of consciousness as my body tried to wake me up. I kept dreaming of green eyes and the scent of Edward. I didn't know that I could smell in my sleep. I felt like someone was holding me, petting my hair. There was soft music, humming. When I finally woke up, it was dark. My room was pitch black, and something pinned me to the bed.

I was disoriented. It seemed forever for my drugged body to completely regain consciousness and focus in on the black world around me. It became clear to me though; something was holding me down. Something large, and hard, and very warm lay partially on top of me. I pushed and it groaned.

"Bella?" The weight took on a shape with its voice. Edward lay partially behind me with a leg flung over my hip and an arm across my chest, holding my wrist on the bed.

"Edward, what are you doing here?" I moaned.

"Shhh, little one. I came in through the window after Charlie went to sleep," he whispered into my hair. "I needed to hold you, to know that you were alright."

My heart sprang to life. He was in my room in the middle of the night for me. I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was too soon for that. He untangled himself from my bed and my body and stood.

"I can't bear to know that you're hurting because of me, little one." He was too far away and heading closer to the window.

"No, don't," I protested.

"It's not right," he said. "This pull between us, it isn't healthy, little one. It won't work."

"But you said that you can't bear me hurting because of you?" I protested.

"That's why I'm leaving. I'm going back to school early. If I stay, it will hurt both of us more in the long run." He sighed heavily and put a hand on the window frame.

"How exactly did you come to that reasoning?" I asked.

"Because you can't live your life around someone else, little one."

"Why not? It's what I want. Doesn't what I want matter?"

"Not if it's bad for you. It's bad for me, too. Too much pressure." His hand ran through his hair, tugging harshly at the roots. I turned slightly so that I could watch his reflection in the dark glass of the window. He looked determined. "It's too much for a guy to live up to. I can't be with you knowing that every little thing I say or do, every little action, or thought, or inaction has the power to crush you this way. You have to grow up, Bella."

He left and I cried again, clutching my chest and gasping for air until dawn.

Eventually, I began behaving like a sane human being. Putting some distance between us seemed to be the right choice. However, I continued to sneak into his room. It was actually fairly easy to scale the Cullen house and break into Edward's second floor window. At least once a week, I lay in his bed. Although, after a while it stopped smelling of him and started smelling of me.

I wondered what he'd think of that when he returned home for Christmas, the jerk. Or would Esme launder them before he returned home. I hoped not. I wanted him to come home to a bed that smelled like girl and find strands of my hair embedded in the fibers of his pillowcase.

I left him a note:

Six months later and I'm still here. Oh, and I've been in your room – a lot. I'm never leaving. Give in. You know you want to.

_-little one_


End file.
